Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday welcomed the Arab League’s endorsement of indirect, US-brokered peace talks with the Palestinians.
His office said the prime minister still awaited a formal Palestinian statement on the resumption of peace talks, but was willing to restart such talks “at any time and in any place,” while insisting the talks begin “without preconditions.”
On Friday, after a visit to the region by US President Barack Obama’s Middle East envoy George Mitchell, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said she expected the Israelis and Palestinians to begin indirect talks next week.
Following a committee meeting of the Arab League in Egypt, attended by 11 Arab foreign ministers on Saturday, a statement was released backing indirect Palestinian-Israeli peace talks after “guarantees” by Obama in a letter to Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas.
The foreign ministers also questioned the Jewish state’s commitment to the process.
“Despite the lack of conviction of the Israeli side in achieving peace, the committee affirms what was agreed on March 2, 2010, in regards to the time period for the indirect negotiations,” the statement said.
Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem al-Thani told a news conference that the time period for indirect talks was two months, at which time their usefulness would be assessed.
“If these negotiations go well, we will extend the period,” he said.
He also said he believed the talks would begin “in the coming days.”
“We do not trust Israel and we said that before. We have found positive indicators from the US mediator. We are now talking with the US mediator and we are giving these extensions to the US mediator,” he added.
Top Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat told a Cairo news conference that a final decision to resume indirect talks with Israel will be taken by the Palestine Liberation Organization’s executive committee in the coming days.
“We have agreed that the final status negotiations will last 24 months and we hope that in the four months of proximity talks we can achieve results that enable us to go for direct talks ... Israel needs to choose between peace and settlements,” Erakat said.
He warned that any Israeli construction in the disputed east Jerusalem neighborhood that torpedoed earlier planned proximity talks would prevent the Palestinians from indirectly negotiating.
“If they build one unit out of the 1,600, we will not go to the talks,” he said of Israeli plans to build more settler homes in the city.
In March, the Palestinians, with Arab backing, reluctantly agreed to indirect US-brokered talks for a period of four months, but those plans collapsed just days later when Israel said during a visit by US Vice President Joe Biden that it would build 1,600 new settler homes in east Jerusalem. The decision drew fierce criticism from the US and led to the worst rift between the two allies in decades.
The Palestinians have since refused to talk until Israel agrees to freeze all construction in the West Bank and east Jerusalem — two areas the Palestinians want as part of an independent state, along with the Gaza Strip.
Netanyahu has imposed a 10-month slowdown in settlement building that the Palestinians have rejected as insufficient.
The indirect talks, with Mitchell shuttling between the two sides, are seen as a compromise.
However, in Gaza, Islamist Hamas condemned the decision.
“Hamas completely rejects any negotiations with the occupation,” it said in a statement, calling US guarantees “a trick.”
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